A typical computer system includes hardware (e.g., processor(s), memory, etc.) and software (e.g., operating system, user-level applications, etc.). The hardware includes functionality to execute the instructions defined in the software. The combination of the hardware and the software allows the user to perform various tasks, such as play games, perform word processing applications, perform geological modeling of a region, and/or perform other such tasks.
The computer system may be connected to other computer systems in a multi-node system. Each computer system is a node in the multi-node system. The interconnection between the nodes in the multi-node system allows the computer system to obtain additional functionality. In multi-node computer systems, it is often desirable to share memory among the nodes, i.e., to provide some form of distributed shared memory in which a process executing on one node may access data stored in the memory or files of one or more other nodes. The shared data may include software and datasets used in the execution of the software.